Exploring SME growth initiatives with Janet De Silva President & CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade
Jan De Silva is a seasoned international business executive with a proven track record of excelling in on-the-ground leadership roles. As President & CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, Jan is spearheading efforts to make Toronto one of the most competitive and sought-after business regions in the world. Prior to joining the Board, Jan spent 14 years in leadership roles in Asia. She served as CEO of Sun Life Financial’s Hong Kong subsidiary and Mainland China joint venture. She co-founded and was CEO of Retail China Limited, which was acquired in 2010. She later served as Dean of Ivey Asia, leading the Hong Kong campus and Asia operations of Ivey Business School of Western University.
The Toronto Region Board of Trade has recently released a report titled Defying Gravity: Building a Scaleup Ecosystem. Can you tell us what was brought on this study? What was the inspiration behind it? The inspiration for it is the work we’ve been doing through our World Trade Centre Toronto called the Trade Accelerator Program (TAP). This was a program we highlighted in 2015 and went live in 2016. It was designed to help our small and medium export-ready companies get active in exports. They go through the program and develop an export strategy, propriety to their company. We then take them to high potential growth markets aligned to their sector and then we thought we’d be off to the races. And here’s what happened. You are a really successful company in Canada manufacturing 200,000 units per year for the Canadian market, you go through TAP, and we take you to China. Your first order from China is for 2,000,000 units and it’s going to be triple that in a couple of months. So, all of a sudden, companies who were trying to get active in exports are getting a scale-up wall. We said let’s sit down and take a look at what’s happening in the scale up ecosystem and what we can be doing to help support our Canadian companies both those domestically who can benefit from support in scaling up, as well as those we are already working with the export side. How would you explain the fact that there is a limited supply of resources and support available to SME owners in the region? What do you believe is the main cause? 42
I would say the main cause for that is a couple of things. Number one, the strength of our Trade Accelerator Program is that it’s both government and private sector working together. So, in the case of the Trade Accelerator, organizations like RBC, for whom there is tremendous value in them helping their commercial clients grow, are at the table. Just as EDC [Export Development Canada] is. And so, we reflected on the situation in Canada right now, historically there’s been some wellintended government programs around, but there hasn’t been a full-court press akin to what we’ve done with the Trade Accelerator. What our report identified is there is a definite need for a scale up version of the Trade Accelerator, where we’re bringing government and private sector expertise together. Where we’re using these joint resources to identify companies who have the potential or what we define as high growth and would benefit from more formal exposure to different financial models, different technology tools, how to build leadership and executive teams, and how to look for growth markets for their businesses both in Canada and beyond. Toronto has always been considered as Canada’s tech hub and one of the best places to start and grow a business. However, because of the lack of resources, it’s falling behind global competitors. Do you believe that if it wasn’t for the lack of resources, Toronto would have the potential of being at the top internationally? As a tech hub, I would put a counter-point to that question. I was just speaking in London, England
I CANADIANSME MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2019
a couple of weeks ago, we are being globally defined right now as a leading innovation center. We are being recognized for the research and for the innovation palate that we have in market. Two things that have enabled that, is number one, the Global Talent Stream that was introduced in 2017 was been instrumental in attracting more talent to Toronto. And the fact that we’ve established such a global profile for AI, quantum computing, those types of things that are really deep in terms of where our researchers and universities are. With that said, our belief is that the coming few years for us to keep this global stature, in addition to the research capability, is how do we commercialize the developments our innovators are coming up with. That is where programs, like our scale up program, are going to be critical to help these innovators get access to market and also, look at how do they grow their business beyond. In your opinion, what are the main resources that the region is lacking when it comes to supporting Canadian SMEs in their growth journey? I think the main gap at the moment is what we’re working on next following this report. The report was to level set for us how we’re doing and what it is that other jurisdictions are effectively doing to help grow their firms. What we are now doing is saying in the absence of anything else that exists in the market right now, we are going to be working on working with government and large private sector companies to put together a program that is going to help our companies get access to the tools they need to scale up. I would say it’s just pulling